Chapter 487 He Slipped Away

• Chester Newman could feel it—raw power humming on the Violet Bolt. Swordmastery guides all things. In that instant, he seemed to grasp a shard of what the second part of the Swordmastery Sutra really spoke of. With Violet Bolt in hand, he looked like a thunder god come down to earth. Chester stared downward, eyes hard as steel. The Demon Lord’s vague outline was growing clearer and clearer. Their soul-summoning array was almost complete. Time to move. Chester swept Violet Bolt once, tasting the feel of ruling lightning. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t ruling lightning apart from his blade; lightning lived inside his sword, and he ruled it through the sword. To command lightning was to command the sword. He lifted Violet Bolt and, with a sudden slash, sent a strike down at the Demon Lord’s phantom below. For a heartbeat, Chester seemed to melt into the lightning itself. Light blazed. Momentum soared like a rainbow’s arc. Seeing Chester’s attack, the Demon Lord finally understood what had frightened him. He shuddered head to toe. “Swordmastery over all things… He actually grasped swordmastery over all things!” he blurted, stunned. He’d heard the tales: the highest realm of the Swordmastery Sutra was mastery of all things—but that was supposed to be myth. Yet here it was, right as he was reborn. And this time, the thing being mastered was lightning—lightning, the hardest and brightest force under the heavens. A century ago, he’d only been sealed by top experts; those elite cultivators had split his corpse and locked the parts in separate places. They did it because they couldn’t kill him, couldn’t seal him whole. So they chopped him up and pinned him down. He’d never feared that. Even split and sealed, he didn’t care—no one could erase him. As long as a sliver of his shaman-soul remained, he had a shot at rebirth. Just like now—the soul-summoning array was knitting his spirit back together, and he could use it to rebuild a body. But this moment, he was scared. Lightning, hardest and brightest under the heavens, was his natural bane. Even if the array finished, even if his flesh reformed, even if his power climbed back to its peak, he wasn’t sure he could live through that raging storm. He had only one option: run. If he didn’t, the lightning would shatter him to dust—body and soul wiped clean, not even a shred of shaman-soul left to flee. Problem was, his flesh hadn’t reformed yet, and the array held him fast. Suddenly, the Demon Lord thrust out a hand toward the pack of his followers below. With that grab, a mass of black vapor surged up and wrapped those loyal wretches. The many followers watching around the golden plate were swept up like dandelion fluff and flung onto the plate. Sheldon was among them. He still had no clue what was happening. The instant their feet touched the golden plate, they went off like bombs—bodies bursting into bloody mist. Threads of black vapor streamed out of each corpse and flew straight to the Demon Lord. He was using their energy to patch his body. Under the crushing weight of the lightning overhead, the Demon Lord snapped. He drove the array at full throttle, desperate to rebuild himself faster. Clumps of black vapor gathered from all directions and poured into him. Below, the Bone-White Taoist couldn’t bear the array’s strain. His body blew apart, too, and the black vapor spilling from him was sucked into the Demon Lord. Chester’s Violet Bolt streaked closer and closer. The black tide surging toward the Demon Lord thickened by the second. At the same time, at smaller altars elsewhere, plenty of clueless worshippers fainted without warning. In the dark, no one noticed the black vapor slipping out of their bodies. The Demon Lord was using the array to drain their energy. Pushing the array this hard had drawbacks, sure, but he didn’t care anymore. When Chester reached the Demon Lord’s crown, he slashed Violet Bolt straight down. Lightning flared off the blade like an extension of it, cleaving for the Demon Lord below. The Demon Lord felt death coming. He sucked in the surrounding black vapor like mad. The Violet Bolt’s lightning was fast—blindingly fast. Just as it was about to cut him, the Demon Lord’s phantom snapped into solid flesh. His body was back. He didn’t pause. He bolted to the side. He was still a hair too slow. The lightning crashed down where he’d just been, detonating the air at his back with a blast that seared him raw. Lightning under the heavens—hardest, brightest. Even a near miss scorched him. He didn’t have time to care. One thought filled his skull: run. Run. Get far, far away. He’d never face this guy who could wield Swordmastery again. Up in the sky, Chester froze for a beat. One strike hadn’t killed the Demon Lord? And he’d rebuilt a body that fast? Chester didn’t dare get sloppy. He raised Violet Bolt to strike again. But this time, he had no target. In a heartbeat, the Demon Lord was gone. Chester couldn’t even catch a trace. He stiffened, then quickly closed his eyes, like a plan clicked in his head. Thunderclouds swamped the sea below. Rain hammered down. Violet Bolt floated beneath his feet, its layered lightning fading out. The lightning roaming the sky no longer gathered to his blade; it peeled back into the storm, raging inside the clouds. When Chester wielded his sword, he could merge with it—man and blade as one. Now, every bolt in the sky became his eyes. Eyes shut, he listened—feeling for each lightning’s feedback. Soon, an image formed in his mind.